The present application is directed to sander improvements. These improvements include a pad sander lower housing having a skirt which flares out over the periphery of the sanding pad. The lower housing can be selectively swivelled in a rotational manner to a position desired by the user. This has particular advantages in dustless versions of a sander in which it may be desirable to reposition the dust collection system.
A further improvement relates to the protection of a user's hand. Palm-grip random orbit sanders sometimes are configured so that the sanding pad may begin spinning at high speed when the sander is lifted off of the work. Since palm-grip random orbit sanders can be grasped by a single hand in a manner that might put the user's fingers in contact with a high speed spinning pad, protection against injury is desirable. To this end, the present application discloses a protective skirt which flares out over the periphery of the pad in a palm-grip random orbit sander. The skirt may be configured for either dustless versions of such sanders, in which case the skirt typically also forms a portion of the dust collection system, as well as with dusty versions of the sander, in which case the primary purpose of the skirt is to prevent contact of the user's hand and fingers with the pad.
In sanders with dust collectors, particularly those that use passive systems such as a cloth bag to catch dust, the dust collection apparatus can be both relatively cumbersome and ineffective. In an improvement to such passive systems, the present application discloses a sander dust collector filter housing formed of a rigid, porous material for entrapping dust. Such a dust collection system can be made in a compact manner which is particularly suitable for palm-grip sanders, whether the sander be of an orbital, dual action, or random orbit type. Larger versions of such filter housings may be used with larger sanders.
Also disclosed in the present application is a random orbit sander brake system which prevents or slows rotation of the pad when the motor is running and the pad is unconstrained by a workpiece surface while permitting the random orbit sanding motion to occur when the pad comes in contact with the workpiece surface.